THE COMING CHANGE



There is a crisis in the land ... a deepening malaise affecting all countries, all people. Unlike the temporary times of trouble afflicting this nation or that from which recovery, however stalled, is eventually assured ... there is no such natural resilience a matter of course, now, for any part of this planet. For this is a time of unprecedented change, a global restructuring that will leave no state or citizen of this world unaffected.

Centuries of abuse were more easily weathered when man's poisons were neither as potent nor widespread as they are today. The price of our progress has never been met and, while it was easier to ignore our damaging influence while we were young and there was time, the age is upon us now in our maturity, and time is very dear. "We get old too soon and smart too late" may have once been nothing more than a charming aphorism, but its message looms ever more serious in the wake of our plodding maturity.

How much longer can we afford such mindless disrespect for the space we share, and for those with whom we share it? It is a question of numberless origin and predictable dismissal. With complacent regularity we seem to readily abandon the most minimal consideration for our fellows and our common soil.

We've become very good at it, fouling the air and water and earth, itself, with agents of insidious and irreversible effect. We've become professional polluters, oblivious to the common sense doctrines not to pee in the pool or shit where you eat.

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Hope may, indeed, spring eternal, but such blind faith may now be destined for disappointment. In our less compromised past there was, yet, a cushion of strength and immeasurable resource. We could then afford such witless waste and continued disrespect, but the limits of such boundless margin are now within our limited perception. For us to finally see them may be our only salvation. We have, all of us, peed in the pool once too often. The chlorine can't cope. We are, indeed, pissing ourselves out of existence.

With equal disrespect we continue, as a species, to hold ourselves in small esteem, to treat each other as something less than ourselves. In most cases, this is due to fear caused by a sense of our own inferiority, whether real or not, which prompts us to assert ourselves quickly to dispatch a perceived threat: we strike first to preclude, possibly, being struck.

We still seek to vanquish our neighbors at the slightest perception of compromise. We approach it with such zeal that this provocation need be no actual threat at all, no real worry of harm to ourselves ... that the provocation is often our own construction and its defense by our targets is then perceived as provocation, which gives us imagined license to quell the enemies we've so carefully manufactured.

We've done it since our Cro-Magnon cousins eliminated the inferior Neanderthals, in squabbles over mates or "myness," probably, just as it is today. In all this time, over 92,000 years, we still haven't learned the singular most important lesson of species survival: that "he" is just another version of myself, equally worthy in this space ... that "he" is "me".

My desire to make him less may be quite powerful, at times, for we are all creatures of ego, unlike lesser predators who only seek to survive. My neighbor may piss me off, often, may arouse my desire to eliminate him ... but I'm an intelligent creature. I have the mental ability to understand the situation. I needn't just lash out blindly and injure without thinking as my less talented brethren must do. For mine is an ability beyond instinct; I'm able to think before I act. I am a Homo sapiens sapiens, a thinking man-ape, not just an ape. Mine is the species-exclusive talent to comprehend my fellow members of that species, other thinking creatures, as well as all other less able creations.

It is my duty to this heritage, then, to justify this lofty evolution, to favor the mind over the muscle ... to think before I act. For that is what I have in all this time become -- the only creature on earth able to consider my intended course. I owe it to myself and all other creatures, since this ability is my exclusive birthright, to consider my choice of behavior.

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Because of this, I should feel great shame ... how I've continued to defecate in my planetary home ... how I still cannot treat my brother as myself ... how I haven't yet been able to proclaim my superiority except at the expense of those I can dominate.

My shame should be great, as a supposedly intelligent creature, for the way in which I raise my offspring. For I have been too tired, or too busy, or too self-involved to do a proper job of it. Because of my neglect, I've contributed children with no sense of values, no sense of humanity. My children have become part of a new generation of non-thinkers. Because I didn't care, I've raised a new batch of others who also don't care. I've given my world the new messiahs of madness.

It didn't occur to me that ignoring my children, refusing to give them a base of humanity, would turn them into little criminals, or make them hollow people with no love or sense of self. Pardon me, but I really thought it was all sort of automatic, you know? People grow up, become bigger people, and then everybody dies. Know what I mean? So what is this that you're telling me -- that my input really mattered?

That is our problem -- not acting as if we really make a difference. For too many generations, too many of us have given the same message to our children -- that it just doesn't matter. Life's a dress rehearsal. Take it easy. It doesn't count. Nothing is really important, and who cares?

Wrong message. Because of it, we've raised too many people who think the same way -- that it doesn't matter, that nothing is important, not person or property or environment -- nothing. Should we wonder why we find ourselves in the midst of nihilists? We've raised them!

More than that, we've abused them. We've ignored their curious natures, for it takes effort to really care. We've wished them away, for we thought they were usually too bothersome. Because we were too lazy, our children have no idea of what it takes to care. We didn't, so they don't. And the next generation won't, either. We've taught them how to be less than loved, less than human ... and they remember well.

They also remember how we've shouted at them, screamed out their less-ness. They will never forget it. One out of fifty may remember encouragement, but most will see themselves as somehow inferior to all others. How can this be? Are there really so many poor human beings out there, or do we only make them think so? We know that answer. We know it every time we tell our new little human to shut up, or that she's a bad girl, or that he's never going to amount to anything. Every word is inscribed in the soul. Remember your message ... it will likely be repeated.

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Children never forget your kindness, and they never forget your treachery or cruelty, either. Rape your little girl and she will hate you forever, and maybe all other males, too. Treat that small thinking creature with respect, though, and you'll build strength into the line of Homo sapiens.
Why is it so many of us seem too lazy to make better people? Is this an ingrained fault, or a product of our environment? Whatever the answer, we now pay the price: American schools breed disinterest instead of scholarship. Gang members shoot indiscriminately from streets and cars in Los Angeles. There are more mass-killers now than at any other time in the past. More burglars. More rapists. More criminals of every type. There are now, at this time in history, more maladjusted people acting against other people than at any other time in the story of man's progress. More people than ever before act against more people than ever before. We can't stand each other.

We also abandon more children at birth, and later, than we have at any time in our past. We just don't care anymore; throw them away! More of us now, because of such childhood abuse of mind or body, are sending children out into the world with undeniable defects. We're making them feel less than human, giving them messages of confusion or worthlessness. The problem and point of it is, when those damaged young spirits are then later mature, it should not be surprising when their subsequent contributions are equally negative and contrary to society. We are breeding our own destruction.

As the millenium approaches, we find ourselves compromised in every corner of the globe. Food shortage remains a problem, though we stand at our present apex of agricultural technology and distribution. We lose more farmers every year because we refuse to buy their crop or to pay them what it's worth. Yet we pay some not to grow certain crops. Every year we give away massive tonnage of grain and other staples to many countries, though ever more of our own people are starving at home. We have more homeless now than at any time since the Great Depression.

Those in high places of power and trust are more often revealed to have breached that trust than at any other time in the past. Whether it's our police, or doctors, lawyers or politicians or judges ... nothing is sacred or safe from corruption and self-serving motives. We can no longer rely on those we could formerly trust. Watergate, Contragate, Wedtech, defense contractors, insurance companies,    S & L's, banks, HUD, BCCI, FHLBB ... many schemes and many schemers, liars under oath ... the higher they are, the bigger the pardon.

As a result, the citizen suffers again, and again, and again. With each new debacle, the cost of poor judgment and abuse of position is shoved up the nation slaves. We pay for every greedy power puppet caught in the act of stealing from us. Tip of the iceberg. Accordingly, prices rise with regularity ... and the people pick up the tab. As we have always done. Unfortunately, this was easier in the past. We have always been able to absorb such foolishness, to subsidize such executive greed. The American economy is a tribute to flexibility, steeped in a long tradition of stability through time. That tradition includes, however, a regular pattern of contraction, as well as expansion.

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In the 1920's, a Russian economist by the name of Kondratieff discovered that our capitalist economy is based on very definite cycles of such expansion and contraction, cycles of boom or bust. He further found that the average length of this cycle was about fifty years. Citing statistical evidence, Kondratieff reported that, ever since the late 1700's, the capitalist economy has expanded and contracted with regularity every fifty years or so. With his research, it was fairly simple to deduce that the next big "crash" would occur near the time we now recognize as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which presaged the Great Depression.

Our current ride on this rollercoaster, after an unprecedented eight-year period of unrestrained growth, is about to end in a steep slide to the bottom once again. We are overdue for such a major correction, but that may be due only to the greater strength of successive generational economies. This strengthening influence may naturally extend the length of our cycle by an exponential factor, giving gradually longer times before our predictable troughs.

There are obvious signs, however, that the cycle is at its end. After having once been the wealthiest nation in the world, we are now the most indebted, with more than six thousand billion dollars in the red. The levels of our corporate and personal debt are also at their all-time highs. Prices are so high, we can't save more than a few percent per year. The average American can no longer afford the American Dream --owning an average home. Credit card debt and defaults are also higher and more prevalent than before. Bankruptcies, business and personal, occur with ever increasing frequency. We are spending more just to stay even.

The old safety measures, implemented to prevent another 1929, are sadly doomed to failure. Insurance provided by such agencies as the FDIC and FSLIC will never cover the losses that we'll see. The FSLIC is already gone. The banks will be next, when the FDIC is finally broke, flooded by too many to save. New England banks were only the beginning.

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There were hopeful signs, of course, when the Berlin Wall became a memory and Russia renounced seventy years of oppression. Free at last, but still imprisoned by poverty. Elsewhere, thousands continue to die in Africa and India, despite massive attempts to assist with food and finance. Third World nations such as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, have been excused from much of their incalculable debt, but are still no closer to solvency. And as the fevered pitch of global impoverishment, whether of spirit or flesh, reaches unbearable levels and becomes closer to delirium, then cracks will appear in the foundations we took long for granted ... the very fabric of our societies will evidence the weakening of seams and things will be the same no more.

Those who abused so many for so long will disappear. New rules will be important and a new order set in place. It will amount to a massive spring cleaning. When the dust is finally cleared, the new effort will bring to those who remain the rewards of living an ethical life, conceived in the spirit of humanity. We will then finally deserve our birthright.